From DE-PS 3922450, there is known a roller cover for station wagons. This cover has an elongated rigid housing, in which a winding shaft is rotatably supported. To the winding shaft, a roll-up web is fastened with one edge, which web leads to the outside through an outlet or slot in the elongated housing. A spring motor cooperating with the winding shaft tends to constantly wind up-the web onto the winding shaft.
In the rigid end pieces of the housing, there is supported a locking slider which is biased by means of a spring into a locking position thrust forwardly out of the housing and which can be pressed back into the housing of the roller cover with the aid of an actuating knob.
The known roller cover is removable from the loading space of the station wagon, which loading space contains, for the fastening of the roller cover, corresponding pockets behind the back of the rear seat and underneath the rear side windows, into which the roller cover is installable from above. In the installed position, the sliders of the locking arrangement engage into corresponding small recesses in the pockets and thus ensure against undesired upward jumping out of the roller cover.
Because of the rigid end pieces, in the known roller cover, there occurs virtually no automatic centering capable of balancing lateral tolerances in the automobile body. Rather, because of the tolerances, the housing is shifted to one side, so that with the roller web drawn out, gaps created between the roller web and the body parts are of different size to the left and to the right. Since gaps as narrow as possible are sought, a deviation in width of the gaps is especially conspicuous.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,480,675 discloses a roller cover for the loading spaces of passenger cars, the cover having no outer housing. The roller web is connected about in the middle with the winding shaft so that, when the winding shaft is rotated by the spring motor, both ends of the roller web move simultaneously onto the winding shaft. In order to absorb the reaction moment of the spring motor, the winding shaft is gripped on its ends by cup-shaped caps, which are guided with extensions in corresponding guide rails of the automobile. In order to remove the roller cover from the guide rails or to make it possible to balance width tolerances, the caps are axially sprung with respect to the winding shaft and can be moved toward one another against the action of the spring, in order to make it possible for the roller to hang out from the guide rails.
The lift for the face-side caps must be so great there that it suffices to make the roller hang out when clearance measures of the auto body lie at the lower tolerance limit. Accordingly, the slots for the roller web in the caps are relatively very long. Furthermore, the possible width of-the roller web is naturally narrowed, since, to the required lift because of the tolerance, there is further added the lift for the hanging-out. The gap width between the drawn-out roller web and the adjacent auto body parts is, therefore, undesirably great.